Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
El Segundo officials have selected a Utah county administrator to take over for City Manager Jack Wayt, who will leave his post at the end of the month.
Doug Willmore, chief administrative officer of Salt Lake County, won the job Tuesday night with a unanimous vote by the City Council. His first day in City Hall will be April 18.
“It’s a big change, coming to El Segundo. Really, I look at it as a whole new set of challenges,” Willmore, 50, said before the meeting.
The council set his annual base salary at $218,000. He also will receive $14,400 in additional compensation that can be applied toward health insurance, and $62,000 in benefits, city staff members said.
In Salt Lake County, where Willmore has worked for a little more than six years, he manages 4,000 employees and oversees a $650 million budget. El Segundo, in comparison, employs a little more than 300 workers and has a general fund budget totaling roughly $56 million.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_17625395
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Friday, February 18th, 2011
El Segundo residents will have to wait until the spring of 2012 to vote on a proposed Fire Department merger with Los Angeles County.
The town’s firefighters association, which supports the plan, submitted an initiative petition in November to put the issue up for a citywide vote.
And although not specified in the initiative, the association had hoped that the City Council would call a special election this spring or summer.
But after a debate Tuesday night that touched upon costs and what would be fair for the electorate, a divided council chose to put off a public vote until the April 2012 municipal election. The vote was 3-2, with Mayor Eric Busch and Councilman Don Brann objecting.
Councilman Bill Fisher argued that waiting to put the issue on the ballot would be the easiest way to save money, considering the City Clerk’s Office estimated the town would pay up to $60,000 for a stand-alone special election, but that the expense would be “negligible” if the city held off until 2012.
“I think the thing to do is to save costs and not incur more costs to the city on this,” Fisher said, “because I think it’s going to go down.”
Read the entire article at:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_17405496?source=rss
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Thursday, January 20th, 2011
by Jennifer Evans
The El Segundo City Council postponed deciding on when to hold an election that will ask voters if they want to annex the city’s fire department to Los Angeles County or keep local control.
Although the city council voted against annexing the fire department a few months ago, a petition circulated by the city’s firefighters garnered enough signatures to place the issue on an upcoming ballot.
More than 2,000 signatures were collected and submitted Nov. 10, 2010, to the city clerk’s office by El Segundo firefighter and resident Bryan Partlow.
Since then, the Los Angeles County Registrar has officially verified the signatures. The verification was done by taking a random sampling of 500 signatures, in which the county deemed 451 valid, giving the petition a 90.2 percent validation rate.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.tbrnews.com/articles/2011/01/20/el_segundo_news/news04.txt
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Thursday, January 20th, 2011
by Jennifer Evans
El Segundo city officials dumped the city’s plan to charge residents for trash pickup earlier rather than later.
El Segundo City Clerk Cindy Mortesen reported that the city had received 1,850 protest ballots by the Jan. 18 deadline, 400 more ballots than required for an official protest. It would take an estimated week for Mortesen to open and verify each protest ballot, a process that she is now not required to do.
Ironically, City Councilman Don Brann, who had initiated the proposal to charge residents for their trash pick-up, a service which has always been free, made a motion to skip the verifying of the ballots and deem the protest mail-ins valid without taking the extra time to open and count them.
City council members Susan Fuentes and Carl Jacobson supported Brann’s motion.
Despite the city council’s efforts to market the proposed trash fee as a new expense that would both benefit the city as well as improve garbage service, residents were not in favor of it.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.tbrnews.com/articles/2011/01/20/el_segundo_news/news16.txt
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Friday, January 7th, 2011
An initiative petition proposing to fold the El Segundo Fire Department into Los Angeles County fire operations has been deemed “sufficient” for the ballot.
City firefighter and resident Bryan Partlow in November submitted a 409-page petition to the City Clerk’s Office calling for a vote on the issue. In August, the City Council essentially shelved plans for a merger – even though it had backing from the firefighters’ union, Fire Chief Kevin Smith and other city employees who believed it would save money and improve the department from a safety standpoint.
The petition with 2,260 signatures was then turned over to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s Office for review.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.tbrnews.com/articles/2011/01/07/el_segundo_news/news15.txt
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Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
El Segundo leaders Tuesday night approved a budget for the upcoming fiscal year that relies heavily on city employee salary and benefit concessions to fill a multimillion-dollar gap in the general fund.
But without solid agreements from the majority of the town’s bargaining groups – which administrators have asked for 12 percent cuts – the City Council agreed to use $3.6 million in reserve money to temporarily fill what remained of an $8.7 million deficit.
Absent wage concessions, officials have said they’ll have no choice but to lay off employees – a scenario that already has played out for some workers represented by groups that did not agree to 5 percent concessions asked of City Hall workers over the summer.
Balancing the books for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 has proven to be one of the most painful jobs in recent memory, several officials acknowledged Tuesday.
“This is probably the hardest budget I’ve ever worked with. This one is almost ridiculous,” Councilman Carl Jacobson said not long before the plan passed on a 4-1 vote.
The lone opponent was Councilman Don Brann, who said he “didn’t get on the council to lay anybody off.”
Read the entire article at:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_16143142
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Saturday, June 19th, 2010
by Jennifer Evans
ItÄôs no secret that those who work for the El Segundo Fire Department are among the highest paid city employees in town. With a staff triple the size of its neighboring citiesÄô departments, the Fire Department alone consumes about 50 percent of the cityÄôs general fund. However, this Äúextra insuranceÄù has been deemed too costly for the town of 16,000, forcing the Fire Department to research the idea of joining forces with the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
During the June 15 El Segundo City Council meeting, El Segundo Fire Chief Kevin Smith presented a preliminary findings report done by LACFD staff about transitioning El SegundoÄôs fire services to the Consolidated Fire Protection District of Los Angeles.
According to the findings, the county recommends staffing at 50 percent less than what it is now, suggesting that the department could be adequately run with 12 full-time staff rather than its current 19.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.tbrnews.com/articles/2010/06/19/el_segundo_news/news04.txt
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Saturday, June 19th, 2010
by Jennifer Evans
In his first State of the City address, El Segundo Mayor Eric Busch sent a positive message regarding the cityÄôs past and present business growth, environmental efforts and infrastructure. However, he also pointed to a future filled with tough decisions when it comes to keeping the cityÄôs budget balanced in light of an expected $4 million loss in revenue.
ÄúEl Segundo is a wonderful place to raise a family, to start a business and to watch a business grow. Over the past year, we have seen much success and progress, which is remarkable in these trying times,Äù Busch said, opening up his speech during last weekÄôs address. ÄúWe see more good things on the horizon and this coming year bodes well for many areas. However, there are serious challenges that must be addressed immediately from our cityÄôs point of view.Äù
Busch spoke of several new construction projects and occupancy of commercial space, and credited aerospace and defense as a Äústand-out sectorÄù in El Segundo. ÄúWeÄôre one of the few markets that had a net positive absorption rate thanks in large part to Northrop Grumman and its takeover of the 101 Continental Building, formerly Xerox CentreÄù Busch said. ÄúAccording to CoStar, a commercial real estate information services provider, the Los Angeles office market ended the fourth quarter 2009 with a vacancy rate of 11.5 percent. The South BayÄôs office vacancy rate was 13 percent while El Segundo was only at 8.2 percent.Äù
Read the entire article at:
http://www.tbrnews.com/articles/2010/06/19/el_segundo_news/news16.txt
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Saturday, April 24th, 2010
El Segundo Mayor Kelly McDowell ended his 12-year run on the City Council on Tuesday night during a meeting filled with commendations, photos and a speech that nearly brought him to tears.
McDowell, 57, likened leaving city government to the way he felt as a 13-year-old giving up his first job on a Fairfax County, Va., horse farm. He said his former boss gave him a piece of advice: “Go out on top, and I’ve tried to do that.”
“It’s time now to turn to new challenges,” said McDowell, who won praise from his colleagues for his efforts to protect the city against airport expansion plans and to spare the Los Angeles Air Force Base from closure.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_14931309?source=rss
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Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
by Andrea Woodhouse Staff Writer
El Segundo has further loosened its filming regulations, wrapping a nearly three-year effort to develop rules that support production but also protect residents.
The City Council on Tuesday made several final adjustments to the ordinance that addressed industry insiders’ concerns that a previous proposal would deter filming jobs.
Leaders dumped a proposed ban on weekend production, so long as those days factored into a location’s annual filming cap of 25 days.
Also, they eliminated a proposed 9 p.m. curfew on filming, instead permitting production to continue as currently allowed until 10 p.m. in most parts of town.
The original proposals were largely intended to protect neighborhoods near the much-filmed high school, but residents indicated Tuesday that they would tolerate later and weekend filming.
“We would support extending the hours to 10 o’clock at night, but 10 o’clock period – not knocks on our doors at 9:30 or 10 o’clock that evening asking us if they could extend filming, but 10 period.” said Suzanne Fuentes, a resident near the school.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_13817222
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